OUR VIEWS: Endorsements: Bremerton Proposition 1

Sun | Opinion

* Shall Bremerton adopt a council/manager form of government?

Our recommendation: No

Bremerton voters will be asked Nov. 7 whether the structure of city government should be changed by eliminating the elected position of mayor. Instead, the city would be run by a city manager appointed by the nine-member city council.

Bremerton last changed its structure 17 years ago, retiring its old-style commissioner form of government - where each council member also ran one or more of the city's departments - and adopting a council/mayor structure.

Under the current structure, the mayor is the only citywide elected official. Each council member is selected by the voters in his/her district.

The mayor can propose ordinances, suggest a budget and nominate people to head departments.

But the City Council must approve those ordinances, the budget and the personnel choices.

Proponents of the change to a city manager want to blame everything that has gone wrong with Bremerton in the past 17 years on the fact that the city has a mayor rather than a city manager. They point to other cities, like Bellevue, that have city managers and ask why Bremerton hasn't been as successful.

There's nothing wrong with city managers. In fact, with proper voter representation, it is preferable to have a professional administrator run city government.

But that's not the case here.

If the proposition passes, Bremerton residents will lose the right to vote for a citywide official. A majority on the council - five members - will be able to hire or fire the city manager. Based on the winning totals in the two most recent council elections, those five members could represent as few as 1,600 voters (where the mayor won more than 4,000 votes in the last election).

Not a single member of the City Council represents anyone outside his or her own district. And these are small districts. If county government were as representative as Bremerton's, there would be 57 county commissioners.

If there was evidence that Bremerton was continually suffering because a hack mayor was constantly standing in the way of the council's brilliant vision, there might be justification for changing to a city manager.

But that's not the case here. Most of what qualifies for ideas and vision for revitalizing Bremerton has come from its mayors. And the ability to move forward with those ideas has often been hampered by petty - sometimes ignorant - council members.

Bremerton suffers because of a failure of leadership - sometimes of the mayor, but also of the City Council. This proposal to change the form of government won't solve that problem.